Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a blade, and a clean device including the blade, and an image forming apparatus, such as a copier, a printer, a facsimile machine, or a multifunction peripheral having at least two of copying, printing, facsimile transmission, plotting, and scanning capabilities, that includes the blade.
Description of the Related Art
In electrophotographic image forming apparatuses, after a toner image is transferred from a surface of a photoconductor serving as an image bearer onto a transfer sheet or an intermediate transfer member (e.g., an intermediate transfer belt and an intermediate transfer drum), a cleaning device removes toner remaining (i.e., residual toner) on the surface of the image bearer.
Cleaning devices employing a cleaning blade, shaped like a strip, are widely used for simplicity in structure and high cleaning capability. There are single-layer blades (single-region blades) and multi-layer blades (multi-region blades) used for cleaning.